Okay, so some of you asked for it.
Once upon a time, I had this idea. It was what one critiquer would later call my 'gothic fantasy', slightly dark and not all that bad. It involved a prophet, a king's son, an evil wizard (of course), and a vampire. Among others.
That idea was actually a finished novel in late 1998, but I never quite thought it was completely right. So I stuck it back onto my pile of WIPs and decided to rewrite it eventually.
Flash forward to, oh, somewhere around June of 2000. I pull that old idea out again, decide that it has some life left in it, and write about 80 pages before I get stuck and decide to drop it again.
Flash forward to, oh, mid-2001. I add about 40 more pages, bringing it up in the 120s, and drop it again. Flash forward to August? July? I take it out again. I sign up for the Breakout Novel Course. I decide that since I'm working on the cursed novel-of-twelve-or-so-rewrites, I can use that novel for the Course.
See me realize this is a baaad idea. :)
See me get technically finished with the novel, and realize that I wanted it to be a lot longer than it actually was. So see me start to go back through it, and expand a bit here, take out a bit there, until I realized that in expanding and changing things, I was really writing a totally different novel.
See me sit back, take a look, and go, huh?
See me realize that I could change all the names in Prince of Shadows and have a totally different novel than the rewrite, which only had the same names and nothing more.
See me change all the names in the book, and send it off. See me give up on The Darkest Road (the new rewrite-that-is-not-really-a-rewrite) for at least November, because of the NaNoWriMo.
And then, joys of joys, see Prince of Shadows find a home!
That's the short version of the long story. :)
The Really Long Saga of Prince of Shadows
Once upon a time, I had this idea. It was what one critiquer would later call my 'gothic fantasy', slightly dark and not all that bad. It involved a prophet, a king's son, an evil wizard (of course), and a vampire. Among others.
That idea was actually a finished novel in late 1998, but I never quite thought it was completely right. So I stuck it back onto my pile of WIPs and decided to rewrite it eventually.
Flash forward to, oh, somewhere around June of 2000. I pull that old idea out again, decide that it has some life left in it, and write about 80 pages before I get stuck and decide to drop it again.
Flash forward to, oh, mid-2001. I add about 40 more pages, bringing it up in the 120s, and drop it again. Flash forward to August? July? I take it out again. I sign up for the Breakout Novel Course. I decide that since I'm working on the cursed novel-of-twelve-or-so-rewrites, I can use that novel for the Course.
See me realize this is a baaad idea. :)
See me get technically finished with the novel, and realize that I wanted it to be a lot longer than it actually was. So see me start to go back through it, and expand a bit here, take out a bit there, until I realized that in expanding and changing things, I was really writing a totally different novel.
See me sit back, take a look, and go, huh?
See me realize that I could change all the names in Prince of Shadows and have a totally different novel than the rewrite, which only had the same names and nothing more.
See me change all the names in the book, and send it off. See me give up on The Darkest Road (the new rewrite-that-is-not-really-a-rewrite) for at least November, because of the NaNoWriMo.
And then, joys of joys, see Prince of Shadows find a home!
That's the short version of the long story. :)
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